Radio Atlantic, IA – AM 1220

February weather ends up being pretty normal

March 2nd, 2013 by Ric Hanson

February ended on a snowy note across sections of Iowa, and that helped make the month overall a little wetter than normal. State climatologist Harry Hillaker keeps track of the precipitation. “Statewide about a quarter inch more than usual, nothing really greatly out of the ordinary as far as totals go…basically about the southeast half of the state has an unusually wet February. Unfortunately parts of west-central and southwest Iowa in particular were on the dry side of normal there,” Hillaker says.

In Atlantic, the average High for Feb. 2013 was 36-degrees, which is in line with the normal High for the month. The average Low last month was 15, which was just one degree shy of the normal 16-degree average. Hillaker says temperature readings didn’t show anything that stood out. He says he doesn’t have all the numbers in yet, but things will be very close to normal. “Preliminarily I’ve got us at two-tenths of a degree above normal, that’s about as close to normal as we can get it. Pretty much it was kind of warmer the first half of the month and consistently on the cool side the second half of the month, and basically canceled each other out and very close to normal overall,” Hillaker says.

Hillaker says the snow late in February turned around what had been a lack of the white stuff for most of this winter. One storm dumped a statewide average of just over five inches of snow, while another left an average of four inches across the state. In Atlantic, we received a total of 5.6-inches of snow in February, which had a liquid precipitation value of just under one-half inch, or .46″.